


Yellow Curry

by nerdgamestrong



Series: I Didn't Come Back Alone [2]
Category: Eu não quero voltar sozinho | I Don't Want to Go Back Alone (2010), Hoje Eu Quero Voltar Sozinho | The Way He Looks (2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Blind Character, Blindness, Companion Piece, Cooking, Fluff, Future Fic, M/M, POV First Person, Same-Sex Marriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-27
Updated: 2015-11-27
Packaged: 2018-05-03 15:19:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5296367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdgamestrong/pseuds/nerdgamestrong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gabriel cooks dinner for Leo and their daughter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yellow Curry

**Author's Note:**

> This is set many years after the movie ends, during the same time period as the story "I Didn't Come Back Alone".

I looked at my husband sitting at the stool in our kitchen. I was making the yellow curry he liked. He was propping himself back by pushing his socked feet on the small wooden island in the kitchen.

I loved his face. I know it sounds stupid, but his face had been the first thing I saw when I woke up and the last thing I saw when I went to sleep for years now. I bothered me in the pit of my stomach that his face could make me disorganized after seeing it across the counter for so long now. It amazed me that he would never see himself, see how his face bothered me when he made that little smirk he does when he makes the most innocent bad jokes I have ever heard in my life. I loved his wide jaw, his flat nose, his brown eyes.

He says that he can smell the curry on me for two full days after I cook this meal, no matter how many showers that I take. He says the smell is strongest in the curls of my hair and that it rubs off onto my pillow and into our big bed with the caned headboard.

I poured my husband and I some cashew juice I bought at the market earlier today. I put the glass in his hand, holding onto it long enough to feel his hands tense to the coldness of the juice, but not long enough so that he would sense that I had been staring at him while I made the meal.

He wasn't just my husband anymore, he was someone's father, my daughter's father. My girl who crawled on the sofa with me when I got home from work. She was always ripping the damn stocking her grandmother brought her. And she would always stare off into space like he did in a way that startled me slightly because I knew the space in front of her was more than darkness.

I focused my attention back on my rice. A short poem I had read came to my mind as I stood over the rice cooker: "I am a widower of the war, stripped of all excess, and versed in the disrespect of battle. The shelling that overtook the home that I had built when I was still a man, had left me a widower. The leathery stomach and bending chest of my nuptial fevers had been buried under the root of our former descendants. The brown skin was covered in white wash stretch tightly over bone."

I felt it in the pit of my stomach, something completely different from the feelings I get when I see his face. This felt like the earthworms in the courtyard had found their way inside me and were inching their way towards my throat. I felt like this when I thought about not having him with me anymore. I poured the curry in a bowl and placed it on the island.

That feeling hit when I most expected it but when I hardly anticipated it. It always happened when I saw glimpses into our lives as if I were a passerby on the street, thinking about how the fun of our lives must look to those around us. It worried me that one day he wouldn't be with me. I looked up as he began to open his mouth,

"Should we call her to the kitchen?"

"I will go get her in a second."

I scooped out the white rice into the silver bowl and turned my curry on simmer. We all can eat in the kitchen tonight. I'll just stand on the other side of the counter and eat while they sit on their stools. I knew that I would never have to worry about losing either of them because if there was a god, I knew that they wouldn't deny me either of them in this life or the next.

I walked alone through the darkness of the hallway to her room. She was dancing around the room with the door open. I told her to come eat as I reached over to pick her up and hold her on my hip. She was smaller than average for her age. I held her close to me and smelled a large strip of her scalp in between the cornrows she had gotten done a few days ago. She smelled like me and him.

I placed her in the stool next to her father and I served them their food. I watched their faces as they ate. He was still propping his foot on the island, so I grabbed his shoulder softly and pulled him forward across the counter. He smiled at me as I returned him back to the floor. I smiled back at both of them, but neither seemed to notice, but that was okay because they were both parts of the pieces of my life that made up this moment.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to do something in first person point of view to kind of give some depth to "I Didn't Come Back Alone", so you may see more stories like this. I hope you liked it.


End file.
